Earth is rapidly headed toward a catastrophic breakdown if humans don't get their act together, according to an international group of scientists.

Writing Wednesday (June 6) in the journal Nature, the researchers warn that the world is headed toward a tipping point marked by extinctions and unpredictable changes on a scale not seen since the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago.

"There is a very high possibility that by the end of the century, the Earth is going to be a very different place," study researcher Anthony Barnosky told LiveScience. Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology from the University of California, Berkeley, joined a group of 17 other scientists to warn that this new planet might not be a pleasant place to live.

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Funny for an article that would seem to have apocalyptic dimensions they reduce the problem to a "transition." Hard to imagine someone who came to the article with little knowledge on the subject of climate change being galvanized by this piece.

Funny for an article that would seem to have apocalyptic dimensions they reduce the problem to a "transition." Hard to imagine someone who came to the article with little knowledge on the subject of climate change being galvanized by this piece.

Death is a transition and some view it as apocalyptic. Many are not able to get passed the belief that something will happen to save them or their children from an undefined issue. There is no set date nor time and there is no set understanding of what will happen exactly so they can assume it will be fine .... right up until there is an impact which is not pleasant. It is human nature now to expect the scientists to provide a cure that does nto inconvenience them.

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“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none” Arthur Schopenhauer

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Localized ecological systems are known to shift abruptly and irreversibly from one state to another when they are forced across critical thresholds. Here we review evidence that the global ecosystem as a whole can react in the same way and is approaching a planetary-scale critical transition as a result of human influence. The plausibility of a planetary-scale ‘tipping point’ highlights the need to improve biological forecasting by detecting early warning signs of critical transitions on global as well as local scales, and by detecting feedbacks that promote such transitions. It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.

_________________With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none” Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."Albert Einstein

we are like a car half-off a cliff. We keep stepping on the gas. Once over the edge, the breaks will not slow us down and things will move fast. So what are we actually worried about? Methane is one greenhouse gas many times more warming then CO2 and they call it "natural gas" for a reason: most things become methane when they rot. Peat bogs have been frozen since before the last ice age in the arctic regions. Thaw them out and you have a lot of new methane. Cold ocean water also holds a lot of gases (including CO2 and methane). Warm the oceans a bit and just like shaking your bottle of soda pop, the extra energy means the gases bubble out.

The tipping point of overpopulation to crash has passed. The tipping point of methane self release was in an article by 3 groups of tundra scientists posted here in 2009, and will be completely passed by 2020.Soils at the time of die off will be at 90% gone, and aquifers, too. The only thing that could stop all of it is the super volcanic eruption of Yellowstone. Ten years of volcanic winter.Come on, blow baby blow!!! This is from 5 months after the three tundra SCIENTIST GROUPS SAID ESCAPING METHANE WAS GOING UP GEOMETRICALLY AND at THE TIPPING POINT.http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 06484.html

_________________"With every decision, think seven generations ahead of the consequences of your actions" Ute rule of life.“We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children”― Chief Seattle“Those Who Have the Privilege to Know Have the Duty to Act”…Albert Einstein

Is there any actual scientific paper burried under it to suggest that there is such a "tipping point" at all and what is needed to actually reach it?

There are a few scientific papers, but no evidence, merely conjecture.

As long as you view the hisotrical data as conjecture, I suppose. The links between mass extinctions and changing climate are shown in the historical record. We will not know when we reach one until it is too late, which is the problem with tipping points.

_________________With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none” Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."Albert Einstein

Is there any actual scientific paper burried under it to suggest that there is such a "tipping point" at all and what is needed to actually reach it?

There are a few scientific papers, but no evidence, merely conjecture.

As long as you view the hisotrical data as conjecture, I suppose. The links between mass extinctions and changing climate are shown in the historical record. We will not know when we reach one until it is too late, which is the problem with tipping points.

There is no confirmed link between the two, and it is simply conjecture by catatrophic climate change advocates:

We review the evidence for the role of climate change in triggering disease outbreaks of chytridiomycosis, an emerging infectious disease of amphibians. Both climatic anomalies and disease-related extirpations are recent phenomena, and effects of both are especially noticeable at high elevations in tropical areas, making it difficult to determine whether they are operating separately or synergistically. We compiled reports of amphibian declines from Lower Central America and Andean South America to create maps and statistical models to test our hypothesis of spatiotemporal spread of the pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), and to update the elevational patterns of decline in frogs belonging to the genus Atelopus. We evaluated claims of climate change influencing the spread of Bd by including error into estimates of the relationship between air temperature and last year observed. Available data support the hypothesis of multiple introductions of this invasive pathogen into South America and subsequent spread along the primary Andean cordilleras. Additional analyses found no evidence to support the hypothesis that climate change has been driving outbreaks of amphibian chytridiomycosis, as has been posited in the climate-linked epidemic hypothesis. Future studies should increase retrospective surveys of museum specimens from throughout the Andes and should study the landscape genetics of Bd to map fine-scale patterns of geographic spread to identify transmission routes and processes.

Is there any actual scientific paper burried under it to suggest that there is such a "tipping point" at all and what is needed to actually reach it?

There are a few scientific papers, but no evidence, merely conjecture.

As long as you view the hisotrical data as conjecture, I suppose. The links between mass extinctions and changing climate are shown in the historical record. We will not know when we reach one until it is too late, which is the problem with tipping points.

Snowy123 wrote:

There is no confirmed link between the two, and it is simply conjecture by catatrophic climate change advocates:

We review the evidence for the role of climate change in triggering disease outbreaks of chytridiomycosis, an emerging infectious disease of amphibians. Both climatic anomalies and disease-related extirpations are recent phenomena, and effects of both are especially noticeable at high elevations in tropical areas, making it difficult to determine whether they are operating separately or synergistically. We compiled reports of amphibian declines from Lower Central America and Andean South America to create maps and statistical models to test our hypothesis of spatiotemporal spread of the pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd), and to update the elevational patterns of decline in frogs belonging to the genus Atelopus. We evaluated claims of climate change influencing the spread of Bd by including error into estimates of the relationship between air temperature and last year observed. Available data support the hypothesis of multiple introductions of this invasive pathogen into South America and subsequent spread along the primary Andean cordilleras. Additional analyses found no evidence to support the hypothesis that climate change has been driving outbreaks of amphibian chytridiomycosis, as has been posited in the climate-linked epidemic hypothesis. Future studies should increase retrospective surveys of museum specimens from throughout the Andes and should study the landscape genetics of Bd to map fine-scale patterns of geographic spread to identify transmission routes and processes.

You really need to learn what HISTORICAL records are, as opposed to possible specific current impacts.

From the original article:

The most recent example of one of these transitions is the end of the last glacial period. Within not much more than 3,000 years, the Earth went from being 30 percent covered in ice to its present, nearly ice-free condition. Most extinctions and ecological changes (goodbye, woolly mammoths) occurred in just 1,600 years. Earth's biodiversity still has not recovered to what it was.

Today, Barnosky said, humans are causing changes even faster than the natural ones that pushed back the glaciers — and the changes are bigger. Driven by a 35 percent increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the start of the Industrial Revolution, global temperatures are rising faster than they did back then, Barnosky said. Likewise, humans have completely transformed 43 percent of Earth's land surface for cities and agriculture, compared with the 30 percent land surface transition that occurred at the end of the last glacial period. Meanwhile, the human population has exploded, putting ever more pressure on existing resources. [7 Billion Population Milestones]

_________________With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none” Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."Albert Einstein

Several periods of abrupt climate change have been identified in the paleoclimatic record. Notable examples include:

About 25 climate shifts, called Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, which have been identified in the ice core record during the glacial period over the past 100,000 years.[citation needed] The most recent of these events was the Younger Dryas which began 12,900 years ago and moved back into a warm-and-wet climate regime about 11,600 years ago.[citation needed]The Younger Dryas event, notably its sudden end. It has been suggested that: "The extreme rapidity of these changes in a variable that directly represents regional climate implies that the events at the end of the last glaciation may have been responses to some kind of threshold or trigger in the North Atlantic climate system."[20] A model for this event based on disruption to the thermohaline circulation has been supported by other studies.[16]The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, timed at 55 million years ago, which may have been caused by the clathrate gun effect,[21] although potential alternative mechanisms have been identified.[22] This was associated with rapid ocean acidification[23]The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event, also known as the great dying, in which up to 95% of all species became extinct, has been hypothesized to be related to a rapid change in global climate.[24][25] Life on land took 30M years to recover.[26]The Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse occurred 300 million years ago, at which time tropical rainforests were devastated by climate change. The cooler, drier climate had a severe effect on the biodiversity of amphibians, the primary form of vertebrate life on land.[2]There are also abrupt climate changes associated with the catastrophic draining of glacial lakes. One example of this is the 8.2 kiloyear event, which associated with the draining of Glacial Lake Agassiz.[27] Another example is the Antarctic Cold Reversal, c. 14,500 years before present (BP), which is believed to have been caused by a meltwater pulse from the Antarctic ice sheet.[citation needed] These rapid meltwater release events have been hypothesized as a cause for Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles,[28]

_________________With friends like Guido, you will not have enemies for long.

“Intellect is invisible to the man who has none” Arthur Schopenhauer

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."Albert Einstein